Saturday, October 06, 2012

Hoomai29 at DKos gives us the rundown on a very good surplus from September.

Sat Oct 06, 2012

The climb out of Bush's almost impossibly deep hole is getting easier--not easy, but easier. Beyond the wonderful news that the 2012 deficit was $207 Billion less than projected as admirably covered in Vyan's diary, the US government was in the BLACK for September for just the second time since the economic crash of 2008.

We weren't just a little in the black either, we were $75 Billion dollars in the black!

According to the Congressional Budget Office the September $75 billion surplus was a good part of the reason that 2012 full-year fiscal deficit was $1.09 trillion, compared with a previous projection of a $1.327 trillion deficit for fiscal 2012 made by the CBO in February 2012. The September surplus was just the second month in the black for the U.S. government since September 2008, when the country was in the throes of a financial crisis. The September data was buoyed by strong quarterly corporate income tax payments and $7 billion from the sale of shares in bailed-out insurer American International Group.The Reuters story also said the U.S. Deficit was "about 7 percent of U.S. economic output, down from 8.7 percent in 2011, 9 percent in 2010 and 10.1 percent in 2009." So, while we're not there yet, we are getting there-- steadily, intently and now a little faster than we anticipated.

But one of the often overlooked realities to the deficit reduction challenge is just how TERRIBLE the Republicans are at actually stopping deficit spending.

"Don’t you ever forget when you hear them talking about this that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office — (applause) — and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic."

But the lack of honesty about U.S. debt and their ongoing deficits is even more astonishing than President Clinton's remarks:

Republicans are zero for twenty since fiscal year 1978. (Democrats are 5 for 15 in balancing budgets during the same time. Carter balanced three budgets. Clinton balanced two, and was barely off in two more.)

In fact no Republican has balanced a budget since Dwight Eisenhower's last budget in 1961.

So when Romney starts talking about how he's going to balance the budget, here's our talking point.

Since 1978, Republicans and supply economics are zero for twenty in balancing budgets. There's no magic. It just doesn't, ever, work.